Introduction
Legal developments in several countries — Sweden among them — point to a growing willingness by governments to tighten the conditions for acquiring citizenship and, more critically, to limit its protections. Ultimately, such measures risk creating or exacerbating statelessness. A recent Swedish government inquiry, proposing a constitutional amendment that would allow for the revocation of citizenship, is a case in point. But what does it mean to be stateless? Despite its relevance, statelessness remains surprisingly vague in both legal and political discourse. In Sweden, the current view appears to be overly formal: statelessness is narrowly defined as the lack of citizenship. However, statelessness can also be understood as a condition. The overly formal approach therefore risks substantial rights deprivations for individuals affected. Both the concept and the legal status of being stateless deserve more critical attention in legislative debates and in legal doctrine.
A Stricter Legal Turn
Questions surrounding citizenship and statelessness have long been relevant. However, in many countries, it now seems to be a top priority for governments to limit more rights for migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, undocumented individuals, and even citizens. This broader international trend — the securitization and instrumentalization of citizenship — is clearly mirrored in several countries.
Consider the United States. So far during the Trump administration, the rights of people seeking safety have been dramatically curtailed through a wave of executive orders and policy plans. These include mass deportations, the declaration of a national emergency over an alleged “invasion,” militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and a de facto ban on asylum claims at the border (see here). One case stands out: over 250 Venezuelans were deported by military aircraft to El Salvador and held in a notorious prison. When a federal judge questioned the basis for the deportations, the administration defied the court, signalling a disturbing disregard for legal accountability (see here and here).
While the U.S. is perhaps an extreme example, similar tendencies are visible in countries like Sweden. Residence Permit regulations have been severely tightened. Proposals to outsource asylum procedures are being considered at both national and EU levels. Most recently, on April 1st, the Swedish government presented its controversial governmental “character inquiry” (the so-called vandelsutredning; see here), summarized by Swedish Migration Minister Johan Forsell in stark terms: if one misbehaves, “one should not be in Sweden” (see here).
However, two earlier government inquiries this year are especially relevant to this blogpost. On January 14 and 15, government inquiries SOU 2025:1 and SOU 2025:2 was published (see here, and here). The first inquiry proposed stricter conditions for acquiring citizenship; the second suggested removing constitutional protections against revocation. Both inquiries raise several concerns, but I will focus on the second.
The Constitutional Stakes of the Swedish Proposal
Under current Swedish constitutional law, Chapter 2, Section 7 of the Constitution guarantees that no Swedish citizen may be deprived of their citizenship (for a full English translation, see here; in Swedish, here). This is considered an absolute right. However, the proposed amendment would change that, allowing revocation in cases where citizenship has been “fraudulently obtained” or convicted of a crime that “seriously threatens national security.” A constitutional change requires two identical decisions by Parliament, separated by an election — meaning the earliest implementation could be in January 2027.
While it is sometimes legitimate and perhaps necessary to restrict rights in response to serious public interests, any such change to constitutional rights must be based on rigorous legal, political and ethical analysis. As some Swedish commentators have argued, however, this inquiry falls short. For example, political scientist Ludvig Beckman has argued (see here) that the inquiry fails to properly identify and address the two core principles which will be restricted due to the proposed amendment: the prohibition on rendering individuals stateless and the protection of citizens’ voting rights.
Statelessness as a Longstanding Concern
Beckman warns that the proposal marks a fundamental shift in the understanding of citizenship and rights as it follows a pattern of Swedish constitutional amendments which concern, among many things, the restriction of absolute rights.
Statelessness is an issue that the international community has long worked to address. Several international conventions have declared that all forms of statelessness should be abolished, and the right to a nationality has been enshrined in numerous international instruments. Article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to a nationality and that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of it. The UN has described statelessness as a widespread problem requiring urgent solutions, including through the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Sweden has, as far as I know, supported this work.
But statelessness remains widespread. UNHCR’s most recent estimates suggest that over ten million people worldwide are stateless (see here). Climate change, wars, and other crises are expected to increase the number of stateless individuals. And despite all this, Sweden now proposes increasing the possibility of making people stateless.
Statelessness as Both Legal Status and Legal Exception
A counterargument is that the 2025 proposal will not result in statelessness, since it applies only to individuals with dual citizenship. But this argument only addresses de jure statelessness. A person may still be de facto stateless, especially if their other nationality offers no real protection. This might apply to citizens of authoritarian, totalitarian, or conflict-ridden states. “If a Swedish court revokes the Swedish citizenship of a person who is a citizen of a country where they risk torture or arbitrary imprisonment, Sweden contributes to making that person de facto stateless,” Beckman writes.
Now the inquiry may be formally correct when it comes to what the applicable Swedish law is. For example, according to the Swedish Citizenship Act, a person is considered stateless only if they are de jure stateless (see prop. 1999/2000:147, 75). De jure statelessness means that a person is “not considered a citizen by any state under the application of its laws.” A person is not considered stateless if they are de facto stateless (ibid, 75).
But this reflects a narrow understanding of statelessness — one focused solely on statelessness as a formal lack of citizenship. It is a view that points to a broader flaw in legal discourse on citizenship, and it appears in other jurisdictions and legal doctrine too, namely statelessness as defined as absence of status.
Statelessness can also be understood as a legal status that subjects individuals to state power without offering protection. On these lines, statelessness is a paradoxical legal condition — a status created by law, and governed by law, through the exercise of power through multiple legal orders. To be stateless means to be outside, for instance to lack access to a legal order, including domestic legal rights. But it also means to be subject to control. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben described this as a state of exception: the individual is reduced to “bare life” — controlled, but not recognized as a political subject, unlike individuals granted “political life” (Homo Sacer, 1998, 203 ff).
If the idea of the social contract is that the individual submits to the state in exchange for belonging, protection, and rights, then there is no basis for state power over those who never entered such a contract — or from whom that contract is withdrawn. Statelessness — like the treatment of refugees and migrants — reveals that the state can exert power even over those it refuses to protect. The idea of the social contract, then, does not hold.
Much international human rights law is formally person-based, not citizenship-based: rights formally apply to all persons, regardless of their legal status. This further illustrates how statelessness functions as a legal category — not merely the absence of status: stateless persons are excluded from national belonging yet included in the realm of legal governance.
And yet, even though the most important human rights treaty in Sweden — the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — applies to everyone regardless of legal status, many rights in the Swedish legal system (e.g., its welfare system) are reserved for citizens or EU citizens. Moreover, it is much easier to restrict the constitutional rights and freedoms of non-citizens, including absolute rights (Chapter 2, Section 25 of the Constitution). Despite enjoying a degree of protection under international human rights law, stateless persons often struggle to realize these rights in practice. This may be due to lack of identity documents, inability to register births or marriages, or fear of detention and discrimination. These barriers further show the paradoxical legal nature of statelessness.
To strip or deny someone of citizenship is not merely an administrative act but creates a legal condition. Statelessness is the result of legal vocabularies that define a person as stateless. It is a deeply invasive decision with consequences for the individual’s entire legal existence: stateless persons often cannot access education, employment, healthcare, property rights, or family life. As Hannah Arendt wrote, citizenship is the “right to have rights” (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2017, 363). To be part of, or to “have” a state may be the most important right of all. In a world where almost all territory formally belongs to states, statelessness means risking the inability to live or stay anywhere.
So, the recent Swedish proposal – as set out in SOU 2025:2 – reflects an overly formal view of statelessness, one seen in many jurisdictions. This abstract view risks obscuring the concrete losses of rights experienced by individuals. A more nuanced understanding of the legal and political dimensions of statelessness is needed — something this inquiry has failed to provide. The consequence of the proposal and similar legal amendments is that an important principle is abolished. More rights become relative. As Beckman notes, this also risks opening the door to further restrictions and infringements of rights in the future.